Toothpaste and Light Bulbs
by IHateCleanBreaks
Summary: Edward's family has passed down 12 generations of riches and snobbery to him. Jasper and Bella are brother and sister and dirt poor. One-shot for now, may expand if you want me to.


**A/N: This is a little one-shot for now. If you like it, let me know and I'll expand it. It can be finished, but it doesn't really seem so to me.**

**Disclaimer: All things _Twilight_ belong to Stephenie Meyer.**

Toothpaste and Light Bulbs

This is a lonely world, one in which I have been born to power. The poor think that the rich have no right to be lonely, to seek the true love of fairy tales or the comfort of a lover's arms. We have no right to be sick or to hate ourselves. We have no right to cry.

But what do they know of the sorrows of the rich? Are we not human? Are most of us not born to this privilege? Can we not have the right to feel safe and secure in our own little homes with our own little families? Have we no right to love and to be loved?

Our money does not hug us or kiss the tears away when we have been hurt. Our money does not smile warmly at us when we walk in from a hard day of accomplishing our greatest dream. Money does not celebrate with us for a job well done, or for our birthday.

The poor may think so, and my parents agreed with them. They spent my childhood roaming about to different places and houses. I saw them a total of two hours a month, if even that. Summer houses by the sea, winter houses in the mountains. I was more often than not stashed away at my grandfather's house, always hoping that they would come to stay with me for a while.

Then, one day, they were gone. They were in one of their summer houses, and a hurricane came by. They built that house for the hurricane season, always hoping they could say they survived one in their specially designed, hurricane proof house. The house crashed into the sea, and they were never found. My permanent residence became my grandfather's house, and I was left the sole heir of a fortune of twelve people.

My ancestor, Edward Anthony Masen the first, made his fortune in gold, many years before it was popular to do so. He was also a packrat, and kept everything he ever bought for his house. Most of those valuable antiques now sit in my grandfather's attic. Edward passed his furniture and his middle name to his son Carson. Carson, at nineteen, became the new head of the Masen household and fortune.

Since then, each Masen has had only a son, has died early, and has passed on the furniture and the middle name that Edward the first was so proud of. No Masen man has lived past forty, with the exception of my grandfather who is now nearing sixty.

In addition to being rich, my family has also been very selfish. We have kept to upper circles, never even acknowledging the poor who live right outside our gate. My parents arranged appointments with the rich families they met, in hopes that I would meet a girl and like her enough to marry her. They kept me far away from poor girls. But they are gone now. And it seems that my grandfather has different ideas.

"Edward, my boy, there is one thing I have regretted in my life," here he paused, deciding how to proceed. We were in the library one lazy afternoon, rereading books that we had each read at least twice before. With the book I had chosen, my mind was far ahead of me, already filling in the middle of the book before the end of the first chapter.

I was feeling impatient that day, and prompted him to continue.

"I regret changing my mind for your grandmother." Grandmother had been dead a year now and I suppose that gave him liberty to discuss that sort of thing. Once again he paused, and once again I prompted him to get on with it.

"Impatient? Well, I can understand. I regret that I changed my heart towards the poor. You know how our family has handled them. We have mistreated them, stole from them, or ignored them.

"I started out differently. I have always been different from the rest of the family, as have you. I loved them. I wanted to take care of them, to help them where I could. Until I met your grandmother. I fell in love with her very deeply, and she conspired with my parents to change my mind about the poor. I left them behind for her."

"That's why they hate us," I said.

"Our family has treated them as filthy, unwashed, ugly creatures with no manners and no ability to speak intelligently."

"My parents taught me that. But you think differently?"

"My dear grandson, your parents were merely repeating what they had been bred to think and feel and believe. The poor are only dirty when they cannot wash and only ignorant because they cannot afford proper schools. As for the ugly, well, there are many that are, but the rest you will have to see yourself. I feel responsible for their problems," he said the last sentence as a whisper.

"Why are you responsible? Did you do something that caused them to be poor?"

"Don't worry about it Edward. Just listen to your heart, and not to spoiled rich kids." With that, he stood up and left me alone in the library to wonder about his responsibility. I also remembered that he had said we had stolen from them. Why would the Masens steal from the poor?

I refused to think that we were the cause of so many poor people. Grandfather was just feeling bad in his old age. However, the more I thought about it, the more it seemed as if it were making sense. Thinking about it also made me feel powerful. My family was perhaps responsible for the ruin of many lives. Unbelievable.

Grandfather avoided me for a few days after that. He hired a new servant named Jasper, and assigned him to me. The only thing Grandfather said was that he hoped we would be friends. Jasper's family was poor, and Grandfather had put an advertisement in the paper for a private "assistant/ servant" for a young man aged 19. Jasper was 20, and was the only man who applied.

He at first supported all the things I had heard about poor people. He smelled, his accent was off, and he was slow and clumsy. However, our butler ran him a bath, gave him some nicer clothes, and some shoes that fit better. His smell and his clumsiness quit immediately. I tolerated his accent and his slowness. At the risk of making my story sound contrived and formulaic, but also needing to keep my story short, I will say that we did become friends. Or at least as much as our different backgrounds would allow. I could talk to Jasper about things that my other friends didn't care about. Their conversations centered around their latest snare and their favorite car of the moment. Those things were not on my mind.

Jasper introduced me to his family slowly. I refused at first, not wanting to be seen in a poor house. But since I wanted to be different from my family, and "listen to my heart, not spoiled rich kids," I eventually forced myself to go. He started by telling me about them, then we walked in his neighborhood, and then we went into his house.

I decided immediately that I never wanted to visit again. It was winter and the house was freezing. The fireplace gave very little warmth and the stuff cooking on it smelt awful. Thankfully I had already eaten and could gracefully turn down the stuff.

It was better when they came to visit my house. I could tell they were impressed with how well Jasper had done in his job hunt. And I was able to speak more freely with his sister Bella in our library than in their living room/kitchen/parlor/library/whatever else they wanted to use it for.

My family has viewed the poor as wretched creatures who have no feelings. But when I got to know them, I discovered they feel the same about us. They think they deserve to be pitied and that they alone deserve to have true feelings and comforts. Our money should be enough. When I talked about wanting and longing and feeling empty, Jasper replied "Is your money not enough?"

That comment drove a wedge in our friendship. His family agreed with him. I asked them if that was how they all felt, and they all nodded their heads. They were confused that I felt that way. I could buy any house I wanted any girl I wanted any job I wanted. I could have my deepest dream anytime I wanted it. So what if my parents had left me to my grandfather? They also left me the fortune of twelve people.

After his family left that day, Jasper started an argument with me.

"Why in the world do you think you deserve anything more? This house, that car, that money? Why isn't that enough, huh? You can't be lonely, you don't know the meaning of the word." I fired him. I told my grandfather to leave me alone and let me do what I wanted. He was wrong about them and my parents were right.

What do they know about my problems? What do they care if my new wife Lauren cheats on me every day with our new butler? So what if my job sucks. So what if I had loved Bella? So what if I married a stranger because she was beautiful and had more money than me? So what if I don't love her?

I must accept my reality. This is a lonely world, one in which I have been born to power. The true love of fairy tales and the comfort of a true lover does not exist in my reality. Only money exists. The poor are wrong about us, but why should I try to change their opinion? Their opinion means nothing more to me than toothpaste and light bulbs.


End file.
